When God Is Turned Against You

I was raised on Sunday church, summers in Vacation Bible
School, and dinner time grace, but these were more due to habit and culture
than spirituality.When I went away to
college, these fell by the wayside.

As my EE (evil ex) became more abusive, he extended his control into
my religious practices, or rather he decided to fill that void with various
experiments in religious extremism.As
with all his abuse, it started off innocently enough - but would eventually become a rather strange form of abuse called "religious (or spiritual) abuse."

My EE was raised Jewish but gave it up in
college, and wanted to “return to his roots” and introduce me to that part of
his life.Sure, why not? Was my natural
reply.I’m no anti-Semite, I wouldn’t
mind learning about a different religion than what I was raised on.

As time progressed, he became more and more radical.He started hanging out with an extremely
ultra-orthodox Jewish crowd, although we never went to temple. We started
eating kosher, not too hard since we were already vegetarian.He also started talking about needing to
dress orthodox, myself included.But
then he had a falling out with his new best friend and gave that up before we
implemented more lifestyle changes.

Apparently feeling an increased need to control this aspect
of my life, he then decided we would be orthodox Catholic.Many of my relatives are Catholic, and so I
was somewhat familiar with it from attending mass when I went to visit
them.However, as could be expected, my
EE’s version was twisted.We never went
to a church or met a priest or any “other Catholics.” In his mind, their ways
of worship were wrong and he knew better.He required that I learn by heart and sing a few particular Latin hymns
several times a day, such as the Te Deum.He also insisted on mandatory home bible study, so over the course of
the few years that we were “Catholic,” I read the bible nearly cover to
cover.He would then selectively choose
verses as examples of how to live righteously, but warp these lessons as
reasons for a beating.

He abruptly gave up Catholicism, and his interest moved to
Buddhism.I was made to read the works
of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and then the Pali Canon.However, even these lessons of peace and love
could not escape being turned around and used against me.He made me shave my head to “save” me from
vanity, in the style of a Buddhist nun.I could only wear his worn out clothes (far too big for me, as well as
being ugly) for the same reason.I was
not even allowed to wear a bra anymore – not a comfortable thing when you have
a double D cup chest - because of some lesson he twisted the meaning of.

As with all previous religious studies, he twisted the words
to tell me I needed to be meek, to not argue, to accept my life as he dictated
it, and most of all to be punished whenever I did something “wrong.”

Ironically, as I read the Buddha’s teachings (which he
intended to use to control me further), my mind which had for so long been
addled by fear and suffering began to clear.I could now see that he was twisting the truth about everything, that I
was not crazy, and that his violence was not my fault.Only he could decide to raise his voice or
his fist – I was not controlling his muscles.And that I was in charge of controlling myself – it was my choice to
react to his jabs.

As I learned to exercise greater control in my
emotions, I could actually stand back in my mind and watch him unleash his fury
upon me, as I did absolutely nothing.There was now no doubt in my mind about whether the violence was my own
fault – I knew I had done nothing to incite or deserve it, and it was all his
own.

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